Group 3: Digital Poetry B
Digital poetry, also known as e-poetry or cyberpoetry is a relatively new type of poetry that is completely done on the computer using a variety of software applications. According to the website Poetry Beyond Text , digital poetry is relatively new from the 1990's, blending in with other forms of electronic literature. This poetry uses the resources of the web, incorporating sounds, images, and text to form poems with powerful meanings and experiences. Authors of this particular literature use software that allow them to manipulate and create movements and sounds with their written words.The genre has been heavily defined by such works as ''The Dreamlife of Letters '' by Brian Kim Stefans or White-Faced Bromeliads on 20 Hectares by Loss Pequeño Glazier . Like all new forms of literature, digital poetry is heavily debated about its role in electronic literature and literature in its entirety. Since there is so much encompassed under the label of digital poetry including hypertext , computer generated animation , digital visual poetry , interactive poetry, and experimental video poetry, it is difficult to label many major features that prove true in all cases. Overall, there are two features required to label a text as digital poetry. First, the text must fall under the label of poetry, and second, it cannot function outside of the medium of its technology meaning that it could not be represented through a print medium. Poetry Beyond Text defines the genre as poetry that does not simply use technology as a mean to distribute the text, but it must go a step further and use the medium of technology in a new or distinct way. This may include using visual cues such as movement of the text or pictures along with the text, using aural cues such as music or sound effects, or using technology's ability to create an interactive experience between text and reader. A perfect example of an interactive text includes Sooth by David Jhave Johnston which was published in February 2005. Like all regular and print poetry, this electronic work aims to evoke meaning to the readers through literary techniques. Digital poetry uses specific software and codes, such as Java or Flash , in order to allow their poetry to have movements, sounds, and pictures. It creates an entirely different experience for the reader because there is more to it than just a page and writing. Sooth is a digital poem that includes six love poems, all with titles that do not evoke the feeling and meaning of love. When entering the poem, the reader is allowed to pick the order of when to read what poem. From there, the user gets to click on the screen to have words appear in front of the background videos. Five phrases at a time will float around in the background in different orders, creating different meanings. Sounds play and colors change in the background, giving the reader an opportunity to feel many different emotions about the love poems. This poem uses Flash software in order to write in code that allows the user to have a hands-on experience with this poem, leading it to be an interactive digital poem. With all the components of this poem, there are unlimited amounts of emotions readers can feel towards this poem. David Jhave Johnston writes a journal in 2007 that describes digital poetics, discussing the methodology, famous pieces by other digital poems, and he discusses his own work as well. In his journal "Fertile Synthesis: Emotion in Online Digital poetry, Johnston talks about his work ''Sooth, "''As the viewer controls the launch speed and coincidence of word and image, the design is therefore subtly different each time since the words will be launched and flock over different points in the video. It is my feeling that sensitive humans attribute emotional attitudes to mobile features of their environment that obey laws of flocking: these projections extend to mobile text" (Johnston 83). Watching things move and being able to control aspects of the poem, allows the reader to create his/her own meanings. My experience reading this poem for the first time was difficult. I didn't understand what I was really supposed to do, nor did I get why words were floating in the background. After reading through the text a few times, it really started to make sense to me. The phrases could be changed in different orders in the background and it would still be a love poem, but with a different meaning. The music and background videos change in the video, but are not effected by how and when the user clicks to have other words pop up. If the reader takes enough time or views the video multiple times, this is when multiple meanings will also pop up because of the changes in color and sound. This poem can only be in this digital form of poetry to give it these multiple meanings, otherwise they would just stay static phrases, with one overall meaning. The six sections of the poem are "sooth", "weeds", "body", "root", "soul", and "snow". The background videos seem to not make sense in the context of a love poem or even the headings of the six sections. For example, "weeds" has a video in the background of a girl. A girl has nothing to do with weeds, but as you read closer, he's using the weeds as a metaphor, saying that his love grows for her like weeds. Weeds grow rapidly, so I can already see that he has immense love for this particular girl. Another one, I found particularly interesting is "snow". The background video is snow on the ground, and this is the only image that makes sense in the scheme of the whole poem. I believe he did this on purpose as a sense to tie all things together. Things may not seem to be related at all, such as weeds and love, but the whole picture makes sense. All of these section headings make up something that represents love. In "snow" he says "one cannot be alone", and he also goes on to discuss that love combines two people, like the process of osmosis. This shows how truly deep this love is. His overall meaning is that love is contradictory in that it doesn't make sense, but when all parts come together, it does. Digital poetry not only has the ability to connect certain subjects, but can also combine letters and words into unique pieces of electronic literature. Jim Andrews has this exact ability and is considered a main player in the art of digital poetry. He has developed many works that fall under that label, and has a website, Vispo.com , dedicated to his work in the genre. He writes on the website that vispo.com is his ever-changing “book”; much like “Leaves of Grass ” is to Walt Whitman. It allows him to produce works of art that “you can experience as many times as you like and find different things each time – very different, and of a new and ongoing life in writing/art/sound/programming”. “Sequence ” is one of Andrews’ poems featured on his website. I wanted to look in depth at this poem because it focuses on the nature of digital poetry and its place in the developing world of electronic literature. The poem would be most closely related to the digital poetry subcategory of flash poetry because there is a constant ticker below the poem with the letters F-I-A-L-E-T-R changing forms into different words. Some words such as “file art” and “life art” can be related back to the poem, others such as “ear lift” and “lie fart” seem to be just random words put together because they contain those letters. This aspect of the poem is one that is considered as an important feature of digital poetry, as it is something that uses the medium of technology in a way that cannot be shown in a paper and print manner. The constant changing of these words lets the reader have a new experience with the poem every time they read it. These words move at a speed that is rather difficult to read one after another, so in order to read and experience them all, I had to watch the words for a good amount of time. Jim Andrews uses a platform of interactive poems for many of his other texts, including “Spas Text ”, and this is somewhat apparent in “Sequence” as well. Although overall this poem would not be considered interactive, the reader does have to click on letters to move through the poem. We start off with two short stanzas next to the changing texts of the letters I discussed earlier. When the reader clicks on the illuminated letter at the beginning of the stanza, the text changes. It begins with “Art is dead but sneaks out for fun” and continues through three more changes, all related to the “death” and changing “life” of art before leading the reader to the body of the poem. This aspect of the poem would be considered somewhat interactive because it requires the reader to take an action in order to move through the text, but in another sense I would not label this as so because the reader can click on any one of the three illuminated letters and they will all move you through the poem in the exact same way. There is no choice of the reader to move through the poem in a different manner, which is what interactive poems often do. Once we have reached the main body of the poem, the meaning becomes all the more clear. The first words we read are “An institutionalized avant garde is:”. The use of "avant garde " is very fitting, as it is a phrase used often when talking about art, and more recently, when relating to new and innovative uses for technology. Avant garde is something that is cutting edge or on the front line of innovation. Digital poetry combines both of these, being a new and different form of art using technology. Andrews goes on to say that this new and innovative art can be changed in the system within the system, which I related directly back to our class definition of remediation. A change of from what was to what is, but completely in the container of the “system” of digital poetry. He also states that this change is a contradiction in and of itself and deems it necessary, but somehow dangerous. Andrews is struggling to explain the inner workings of the development of digital poetry in a digital poetry medium. This highlighted the medium, as transparent immediacy often does. He focuses on art’s relationship to bureaucracy and left me thinking of art as its own government. The voters are the users and lovers of art, the politicians are the artists. Andrews leaves us with a simple, yet powerful idea: that this avant-garde movement of art is “a co-operative of artists”. Although this poem is not one that I would consider interactive, this last sentence and the poem’s overall tone and meaning makes me feel like I could be an artist involved in this co-operative. Andrews is an important and experienced artist in this digital poetry movement, and this poem is my favorite of his that I have read. It is one that embodies what a digital poem strives to be and focuses it's content on what this movement means to Andrews and many others in this field. The piece of electronic poetry, “Girls’ Day Out ” by Kerry Lawrynovicz simply starts out as a poem depicting two girls riding horses through a windstorm. By combing certain words and with the use of cut-ups , a real life horror story begins to unveil. Flash media was used as the main source to view the poem and as the driving force as to how and where certain words were going to come into place. Lawrynovicz made what seemed to be a pleasant read, an entirely new element completely that sparks the reader’s interest in an opposing new way. It isn’t until you click anywhere on the poem that words start to fade and certain words are left in bold. The words in bold tell a completely different story entirely. The bolded words include, “Girls six of them”, “in riding boots”,” rotting under the plateau grass”, “two only bone in the mud beneath the windtorn field.” These highlighted words are in reference to the “Killing Field ” murders that took place between 1982 and 1991. Four bodies of young women were found brutally beaten and assaulted on an abandoned oil field; which was also a common place for horseback riding, hikers, bikers, etc. At the end of the poem, a line appears stating, “For the Calder Road murder victims” and then separately names the four victims involved with the killings, as if to give each girl their own moment of respect. To gain further knowledge about the murders and the significance it has to the author, clicking on the Author’s note brings an entirely new level of interest. Kerry Lawrynovicz was in fact one of the girls that would ride horses through what is known as the “Killing Fields.” She did this for years until one day her grandmother discovered through a newspaper article what had been discovered on the very ground that Kerry had trotted on with her horse. She quotes, “This poem grew out of my memories of riding through those fields, the times when our horses would inexplicably refuse to go a certain way, and the sick feeling that perhaps we had been riding over the bodies of murdered girls. Girls who might just as easily have been us.” Knowing this simple fact about the author brings a closer connection between author and reader and not just author and poem. “Girls’ Day Out” is a mini biography concerning a piece of the author that obviously intrigues her. Also notice the first line of the highlighted words, “Girls six of them”.” Only four girls were discovered in the abandoned oil field on Calder Road. Kerry Lawrynovicz also connects the line, “two only bone in the mud beneath the windtorn field.” This line is a direct reference to the author herself and her sister, for both had walked and roamed the same land as the bodies of those women. By combining herself and her sister with the other four girls, she brings in the possibility of what may have happened while taking a pleasant horse ride through the abandoned oil field. References http://www.edutopia.org/blog/digital-poetry-terry-heick 4. http://psu-sk.tripod.com/frames/i45-calder.html Return to: UMD Fraken Wiki